


Never your's to begin with

by VampireBait



Category: L.A. By Night (Web Series), Vampire: The Masquerade
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:21:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25934305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VampireBait/pseuds/VampireBait
Summary: After Nelli's party Eva left. Now she's back and delivered to Nines Rodregeiz with the weight of their past hanging unsaid between them."If you love something, let it go, if it doesn't come back, it was never your's to begin with"
Relationships: Eva (L.A. By Night)/Nines Rodriguez
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	Never your's to begin with

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers of the Bloodlines game:
> 
> Nines ends up in Griffith park right around the time Eva would have been in residence. In fact he fights a werewolf right around the Observatory. It's been speculated that they met and had a relationship in this time (because he's Fines Rodreigeiz and we love a good ship)
> 
> This is just a brief thing that came into my head on them getting a chance to talk after the events of season 4. Very brief but I hope you enjoy it.

Stars…they were the first thing she saw when Eva was finally able to open her eyes and see clearly for the first time in what felt like months. She blinked in confusion and they winked back from the infinite black sky laying open above her.

She was outside, she could feel cool damp grass beneath her aching body, the fresh scent of it in her nose with the heady fragrance of wild jasmine. Something shifted beside her in the darkness.

“Jasper?”

The name fell from her lips before she could stop it. A hope she shouldn’t have voiced aloud.

The response was a confusingly familiar chuckle. “Hey, I know you got me good but I don’t look that bad do I?”

Eva turned her eyes away from the stars to look on Nines Rodregeiz. The Baron was crouched, his trademark jacket in a smoking heap to one side. He was holding his arms close to his chest but it was clear that both had been burned badly. She recognised ward damage when she saw it, having been the cause of it many times and apparently once more.

Nines winced as he settled himself sitting in the grass beside her, carefully avoiding touch.

“Maybe, there should be a friendly off switch.” He grumbled good naturedly gesturing to her clothes. “Some kind of…sense of intent…I don’t know how this works, but it hurts like hell.” 

Eva turned her eyes away from him, guilt coiling tightly in her chest. Something else to add to the weight. She carefully let her senses out, tasting the night air. Dawn was maybe three hours away, maybe less, but there was time enough to find shelter…if she chose too. 

She was in Griffith park, she’d know the feel of it, the sense of it anywhere. Her hands dug into the ground beneath her, feeling the magics in the earth coil up to meet her touch.  
Home. How had she gotten here? Behind her eyes painful images danced, Katya, her face awash in crimson tears. Strauss…

Eva winced pushing herself up sharply to sit. Something in her chest cracked and gave way. A rib perhaps, she didn’t care, the pain wiped the immediate memories away and for that it was welcome.  


Nines watched her. As she forced herself up he almost reached out to help but his arms protested and fear of the wards made him check himself. She always had protected herself. He’d already endured that just to get her here and honestly, it had almost been too much for him. He wondered how it would be if the legend of Nines Rodregeiz, Slayer of Lupines met his end because he just had to be the white knight.

Actually the thought of dying by his own stubbornness kind of appealed. 

“So tell me.” He said at last. 

“How does, The White Witch of Griffith Park, end up dumped down town in Torpor. In my territory no less, with half the Cammy following?”

He winced as he pulled out a small glass bottle from his pocket and passed it over to her. “You’ve got a friend who knows a lot about us apparently.”

Eva reached out a trembling hand to take the bottle. The smell of Vitae surrounded it, some still giving the glass an unsettlingly familiar tint. She turned it to look closely at the hand written note taped to one side. In an achingly familiar hand the words “have her drink this.” were elegantly drawn.

She took a moment to steady her voice before meeting Nines’ intense gaze. “Torpor?”

He knodded. “You were…” he cleared his throat, “…I wasn’t sure how to help you until I found this in your bag. How is it someone knew to bring you to me? With a bottle of powerful blood? Way we left it no-one knew about us. So why? Why not take you to Jasper?”

Eva brought the bottle to her lips inhaling the scent as she whispered her thanks to Katya.

“I don’t know.” She whispered at last. Gathering her strength she took a moment to heal what she could. The strength of Katya’s vitae helped but she still felt the hunger spike.

Nines frowned, thinking. “Look…I don’t know where you have been. I assume I don’t need to know?” 

Eva didn’t meet his gaze. 

“But I had to carry you, through fire and Lasombre to get you here.” He raised his blackened arms to illustrate his point. 

“Last thing I hear of you was that you’d been fighting Gargoyles with Jasper, in some underground Labyrinth.” He gestured at the ground beneath them. 

“I thought, after everything that we were at least friends? Allies at the very least! I always told you to come to me if you needed help. So why? Why did I have to find all this out at a Baron meeting with Victor Temple of all people?”

The Tremere’s blue eyes turned to him sadly, but Eva said nothing.

Nines’ sighed, he moved as though to run his hand through his hair but thought better of it. 

“You said you didn’t want to be involved.” He said at last his voice accusing. 

“That night…when I asked you to join me and help take down LaCroix, you said you were not an Anarch. How am I supposed to feel when you gave _us_ up for your freedom, only to start running around with the Valley Coterie? With Jasper?”

“I’m not…I’m not part of that Coterie.” Eva whispered. Her head was pounding, her beast gnawing at the inside of her chest, begging for blood. Nines voice was confusing her, memories of the park on fire, of his blood on the ground, Lupines growling and snarling…

“You know how I found out about you and Jasper?” he continued. “First time I met the guy he’s hurt, something about a building falling on top of him. He brings out this blue potion and the moment he opens it all I can smell is you. Your Vitae.” Nines swallowed hard looking away from her for the first time.

“All those years and it’s amazing how something like that can hit you like a fist in the dark.” 

He turned back to find Eva’s eyes on him. Brighter now, the burns and cuts on her face almost gone completely. It was jarring, to see her dressed in red. His Eva, the Eva he’d…known once, decades before. The White Witch. It was painful to admit but it was as though she were gone, consumed by the vision in front of him.

She spoke at last reaching out her hand to take his. He almost flinched away, but allowed it, clenching his jaw to regain his composure. 

“What did you want from me?” she asked quietly, calmly. Her eyes were sad but cold. 

“What we had was sweet but brief, you chose to be an Anarch, chose to be Baron Nines Rodregeiz…you knew I wouldn’t be part of that…I wouldn’t give up my freedom for that…I was never an Anarch.”

Nines nodded sighing. “Look…I don’t…who you’re involved with and what you do, that’s not my business. I get that.” He held her gaze with a dry smile. “But next time, a text maybe? A note even?”

“I’m sorry.” 

The Baron looked out over the lights of LA, they sat in silence for a moment while Eva healed herself as best she could. 

“Is he worth it?” Nines asked at last. He didn’t look at her.

Eva blinked in surprise. There was a long moment before she answered. 

“yes…”

Nines knodded. He took something else from his pocket turning it over in his hand, studying it, his brow furrowed.

“I have concerns…” he held up a necklace for her to see, her necklace, the one Jasper had given her. The chain had been broken but the glass bottle was intact, the dead sunflower encased within held by the Jasper stone on top. 

“Is this how he sees you?”

Eva’s hand flew to her chest noticing its absence for the first time. Nines looked at her his eyes gentle. Earnest.

“There’s a reason this flower is dead you know.” He said hanging it from the chain in front of her eyes. 

“Seems like, what you wouldn’t change for me, you did in a heartbeat for him and he took everything you were away.”

“It’s not like that.” Eva whispered. 

She reached out for the necklace, afraid that he wouldn’t return it. He hesitated but laid it carefully into her palm. She sighed closing her fingers around the familiar glass.

“He was…we were…staying safe.” It sounded weak even to her. Nines had a way of putting things in a light that wasn’t entirely comfortable or fair. 

He laughed “so you gave up your freedom…for safety…did you feel safe? Did he make you feel safe?”

Eva didn’t answer, turning the glass between her fingers she watched the dead flower rolling against it’s confines.

“Seems to me all that did was put you in a cage. Put you in his control instead of someone else’s. Maybe you preferred that but, keeping you locked away in the dark, that’ll kill you faster.”

He paused for a moment gathering his thoughts, when he looked back at her his eyes were the same eyes she’d looked into all those years ago, when the park smelt like fire and blood.

“What we had…I walked away, because you wanted it, I walked away because of the movement, but I stayed away…because I knew you need the sky and the park. Eva, to love you is to know you need to be free. If Jasper can’t see that…”

Eva closed her fist around the necklace forcing herself to stand. 

“Nines…don’t. Like you said…it’s not your business…Thankyou for saving me…I’m sorry.” 

She turned to walk away unsteadily, not even sure where she was safe to go.

Nines stood too, grabbing his coat from the ground. 

“Damnit Eva! I just want you to live!!”

Eva turned to him, blood tears falling from her eyes. “it’s not that simple.”

Nines swore taking a step closer, he opened his arms, hoping, knowing that he couldn’t touch her, but hoping. A beat of hesitation, a moment was all it took for her to close the distance and push herself against him allowing his arms to close around her without fear of the wards activating.

He held her close breathing in her scent, she was so small his arms were almost a blanket covering her, a shield from the night and all it held. The wounds on his arms screamed but he only held her tighter mindful of her pain, dismissive of his. There was a time, when he’d held her like this, a time when they’d been more and he had dared to hope…well, that was decades ago now. Nines couldn’t imagine Jasper in his place. Couldn’t imagine her in the arms of the Nosferatu, but apparently, she could and that was enough. 

“I’ll take you to him.” He promised against her hair. 

She sagged against him at that. In relief, or defeat, he didn’t know, but some tension left her and she held him back for a time.

At last she pulled away. Nines kept her hands in his raising them to plant the smallest kiss to her fingers a smile on his face as he promised. “Just…if he treats you bad I’m coming for him.”

Eva returned his smile with genuine warmth for the first time since she woke.

Nines led her through the park to his bike. She settled comfortably behind him, her arms wrapped tightly round his waist.

“Like old times.” She said wistfully.

Nines smiled as he started the engine. As dawn approached, he promised himself he wouldn’t interfere, but he would damn well be watching out for her.


End file.
